Can't Catch a Break: Gender, Jail, Drugs, and the Limits of Personal Responsibility

By Prof. Susan Starr Sered and Prof. Maureen Norton-Hawk

Based on five years of fieldwork in Boston, Can’t Catch a Break documents the day-to-day lives of forty women as they struggle to survive sexual abuse, violent communities, ineffective social and therapeutic programs, discriminatory local and federal policies, criminalization, incarceration, and a broad cultural consensus that views suffering as a consequence of personal flaws and bad choices. Combining hard-hitting policy analysis with an intimate account of how marginalized women navigate an unforgiving world, Susan Sered and Maureen Norton-Hawk shine new light on the deep and complex connections between suffering and social inequality.

As an additional teaching tool, instructors can find updates about the women in Can't Catch a Break on Susan's blog at http://susan.sered.name/blog/category/cant-catch-a-break/.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Sep 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9780520958708

Prof. Susan Starr Sered

Susan Starr Sered is Professor of Sociology and Senior Researcher at the Center for Women's Health and Human Rights at Suffolk University in Boston. She is the author of Uninsured in America: Life and Death in the Land of Opportunity. Read more about the women in Can't Catch a Break and Susan's research on her blog at http://susan.sered.name/blog/. Maureen Norton-Hawk is Professor of Sociology and Codirector of the Center for Crime and Justice Policy Research at Suffolk University in Boston. She has published widely in the field of women and prostitution.

Book preview

CAN’T CATCH A BREAK

CAN’T CATCH A BREAK

GENDER, JAIL, DRUGS, AND THE LIMITS OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

Susan Starr Sered and Maureen Norton-Hawk

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Parts of chapter 5 have appeared in Suffering in an Age of Personal Responsibility, Contexts 13 (2014):38–43. Parts of chapter 6 have appeared in Criminalized Women and Twelve Step Programs: Addressing Violations of the Law with a Spiritual Cure, in Implicit Religion 15, no. 1 (2012): 37–60; and Whose Higher Power: Criminalized Women Confront the Twelve Steps, in Feminist Criminology 6, no. 4 (2011): 308–322. Parts of chapter 7 have appeared in Mothering in the Shadow of the United States Correctional System, in Mothering: Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Michelle Walks and Naomi McPherson (Toronto, Ontario: Demeter Press, 2011), 293–306.

© 2014 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sered, Susan Starr, author.

    Can’t catch a break : gender, jail, drugs, and the limits of personal responsibility / Susan Starr Sered and Maureen Norton-Hawk.

        pages    cm

    Includes bibliographical references and index.

    isbn 978-0-520-28278-0 (cloth : alk. paper)

    isbn 978-0-520-28279-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)

    isbn 978-0-520-95870-8 (e-book)

    1. Abused women—Massachusetts—Boston—Social conditions. 2. Female offenders—Massachusetts—Boston—Social conditions. 3. Women drug addicts—Massachusetts—Boston—Social conditions. 4. Responsibility—Social aspects—Massachusetts—Boston. I. Norton-Hawk, Maureen, author. II. Title.

    HQ1439.B7S47    2014

    3628.83’70974461—dc232014011744

Manufactured in the United States of America

23  22  21  20  19  18  17  16  15  14

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on Natures Natural, a fiber that contains 30% post-consumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

List of Tables

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Joey Spit on Me: How Gender Inequality and Sexual Violence Make Women Sick

2. Nowhere to Go: Poverty, Homelessness, and the Limits of Personal Responsibility

3. The Little Rock of the North: Race, Gender, Class, and the Consequences of Mass Incarceration

4. Suffer the Women: Pain and Perfection in a Medicalized World

5. It’s All in My Head: Suffering, PTSD, and the Triumph of the Therapeutic

6. Higher Powers: The Unholy Alliance of Religion, Self-Help Ideology, and the State

7. Suffer the Children: Fostering the Caste of the Ill and Afflicted

8. Gender, Drugs, and Jail: A System Designed for Us to Fail

Conclusion: The Real Questions and a Blueprint for Moving Forward

Appendix: Methodology and Project Participant Overview

Notes

References

Index

ILLUSTRATIONS

1. Female imprisonment rates, United States and selected states, 2011–2012

2. Male imprisonment rates, United States and selected states, 2011–2012

TABLES

1. Percentage of adults (18 years and older) who reported using illicit substances, 2012

2. Comparative demographic characteristics of project volunteers versus women incarcerated in Massachusetts as of January 1, 2008

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Our names are on the cover of this book, but the real authors are the women who so generously shared their time, experiences, and conversations with us. Although they cannot be named here because of their vulnerable life and legal situations, this is their story. We have done our best to tell it faithfully.

We wish to thank the many caseworkers, therapists, nurses, doctors, public defenders, counselors, and advocates who help poor, marginalized, sick, and criminalized Americans. These valiant frontline workers opened doors for us as researchers and generously shared their observations and expertise with us. Special thanks to Gina Dixon for helping us stay in touch with some of the women during their most difficult times.

We thank Suffolk University for providing summer research grants as well as an encouraging and supportive work environment. We especially thank the members of the Suffolk University Sociology Department, who put up with our turning the office into a drop-in center. The Center for Women’s Health and Human Rights at Suffolk University contributed funding and support to this project from the beginning to the end. We are particularly grateful to our colleagues Amy Agigian, Diane D’Souza, and Elana Stone. Funding also was provided by the Center for Crime and Justice Policy Research, Suffolk University.

Our warmest thanks to Thomas Patterson, who always made the women feel welcome when they came to see us at Suffolk University.

This research would have been impossible without the generosity of the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority Transit Police. Their donation of mass-transit passes encouraged the project participants to maintain regular contact with us and compensated participants for the time they spent helping with the project.

Experts in a number of fields generously vetted chapters for us. We wish to thank our colleague James Ptacek for help with chapter 1, Joey Spit on Me. His expertise in the field of intimate partner violence was invaluable. George Lipsitz of the Department of Black Studies (University of California, Santa Barbara) and our Suffolk colleague Averil Clarke helped us understand intersections of race, gender, and class for chapter 3, The Little Rock of the North. Dr. Jeffrey Baxter, addiction consultant for the Massachusetts Department of Corrections and professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Massachusetts Medical School graciously read and critiqued chapter 4, Suffer the Women: Pain and Perfection in a Medicalized World, and shared with us his vast experience working with addicts. Jesse Begenyi of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition encouraged us to feature Ginger, and pointed out to us ways in which her experiences are similar and different from those of other transwomen. Our dear friend Janet Yassen, longtime anti-violence advocate, therapist, and crisis services coordinator for the Victims of Violence program at Cambridge Hospital, shared her expertise and experience with us for chapter 5, ‘It’s All in My Head.’ Our colleague Erika Kates, founder of the Massachusetts Women’s Justice Network, and our Suffolk colleague Erika Gebo provided expert assistance with chapter 8, Gender, Drugs, and Jail. We appreciate their collegiality, dedication, encouragement, and critical thinking about these complex issues.

We are fortunate to have worked with Maura Roessner at the University of California Press. Her unflagging enthusiasm for the project and her ability to help us sort out the forest from the trees are extraordinary. And we especially thank Steven Baker, whose guidance both in style and in substance went way beyond the duties of copyediting.

We have also been blessed with an incredible team of dedicated research assistants at Suffolk University. Each has contributed to this project in countless valuable ways: Annie Duong, Christina Tucciarone, Ellesse Akre, Rachel Bieu, Andrea Blasdale, Cathryn Duff-Still, Torrey Giaquinta, Joanna Prager, Jen Sturman, Ashley Terhune, and Nicole Usher. Thank you!

In addition to the Suffolk team, Susan appreciates the ongoing support, encouragement, and intellectual involvement of two other teams. Thank you to my Rosh Hodesh sisters: Debra Cash (writer extraordinaire), Julie Arnow, Ronnie Levin, Stephanie Loo, Shosh Schnur, and Vivian Troen. Thank you and all my love to my family: Yishai, Barak, Yoav, Asher, Shifra, Dad, and Barbara. And a special wag to Thorfinn and to Scout, who may not have contributed much intellectually to the project but certainly helped Susan stay calm and upbeat during some of the more harrowing moments.

We have received support and encouragement from Massachusetts state representative Kay Khan and from Lisa Rosenfeld, counsel and legislative director of the Joint Committee on Children, Families, and Persons with Disabilities (Massachusetts). In return, we offer them this book as a tool for legislative initiatives and advocacy on behalf of all who struggle with poverty, illness, and violence.

Introduction

When Francesca came bursting onto the scene at the drop-in center for poor and homeless women, she brought a spark of energy into the circle of worn-out faces and worn-down bodies, women slumped in armchairs, nodding off while watching The Jerry Springer Show and waiting for the shelters to reopen at 4:00. Outspoken, energetic, and full of plans, Francesca declared how terrible it is that Boston’s Mayor Menino stands by while so many people have to live on the street. With a few tosses of her long, auburn hair, she shared her dream of opening and running a facility that welcomes everyone. Five minutes later she swept out the door into the August heat with a promise to buy Pepsi for everybody. Ginger resumed her desultory search through a pile of donated toiletries, Elizabeth continued weeping into a handful of tissues, and Vanessa went back to scratching her arm and poking around in the trash in hopes of finding a cigarette stub long enough to take outside and light up.

A week later Francesca returned to the women’s center. Flashing her new turquoise acrylic nail extensions, she pulled a sequined minidress and a pair of 1960s style go-go boots out of a bag. With the recession that began in 2007 having shut down employment opportunities for undereducated and unskilled workers, she had taken one of the few jobs she could get—waitressing and dancing at a local strip club. Thrilled with the clothes as well as the admiration from male patrons, she nevertheless was adamant that she would not have sex with the customers—she wouldn’t even let them kiss her on the cheek. But by late fall the situation became tense. At the club, she said, the owners expect the girls to have sex for money. As time went on, she began going out on dates and drinking more heavily as a way to put up with the pressures of the men at the club. It is starting to get out of control, Francesca confessed.

Francesca had always loved dancing, but the long shifts at the club started to catch up with her. One night her knee gave out. Unable to go on dancing, she was fired on the spot. Initiating what would become a routine for the next five years, Francesca called us. We picked her up a block away from the club and drove her to the apartment of her old boyfriend who was willing to let her stay with him at night but would not give her a key or allow her to stay in the apartment by herself during the day.

Now a regular at the women’s drop-in center, she tried to summon up her usual I don’t take crap from anyone style, but began to confide to us that she felt afraid and vulnerable. All I do is walk around all day—I have no place to go. Her arthritis had become increasingly painful (the joints in her fingers looked miserably swollen), and she said, I have a pain in my throat that my doctor thinks might be throat cancer. My father died of cancer. Often on the verge of tears, she even considered suicide. I just can’t catch a break anywhere.

UNDER SIEGE: WOMEN IN AN UNFORGIVING WORLD

Several years before meeting Francesca, we traveled from Boston to northern Idaho and from the Mississippi Delta through the midwestern Rust Belt to southern Texas, speaking with working Americans caught in spirals of low-wage jobs, chronic illness, inadequate access to health care, visibly stigmatizing conditions (such as rotted teeth), and diminishing employment opportunities. At the time, we saw ourselves as cartographers mapping the portals into a vortex that seemed to draw in increasing numbers of Americans. Our mission was to understand how and why people who strive to do the right thing in terms of work and family find themselves barely scraping by (Sered & Fernandopulle 2005). Our concerns were well grounded in the statistics: nearly 4 million Americans work for hourly wages at or below the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2013); nearly one out of two American adults live with at least one chronic illness (NCCDPHP 2009), with one-quarter of these men and women experiencing significant impairment in daily activities; and close to 30 percent of working-age adults with disabilities are impoverished (Anderson 2010).

As we said good-bye to the people we met on our journeys, we found ourselves worrying about their futures. In our imaginations we visualized further deterioration in health, leading to unemployability; homelessness; the management of pain and fatigue with Percocet, crystal meth, tobacco, and other drugs; involvement with police and courts; and even premature death. We began to wonder if we were witnessing the formation of an American caste of the ill and afflicted, and we asked ourselves where we might go to learn more about the lives and deaths of Americans stuck in conditions of illness and poverty.

Reports by experts in public health and criminology provided clues. America houses substantial numbers of ill and impoverished people inside prisons. According to statistics provided by the U.S. Department of Justice, 84 percent of inmates earned less than $2,000 a month, and 59 percent earned less than $1,000 a month, before they were incarcerated (James 2002). Over half of the incarcerated population have a mental health issue (James & Glaze 2006); at least 40 percent suffer from chronic illness (Cecere 2009); and about one-third have a significant hearing impairment (Vernon 1995). In addition to mental health challenges, inmates have higher rates of hypertension, myocardial infarction, asthma, arthritis, cervical cancer, urinary tract infections, chronic headaches, tuberculosis, and hepatitis than Americans in the general population (Massoglia 2008b).¹ Unhealthy prison conditions, coupled with the poor employment prospects facing ex-offenders (criminal records are easily accessed by potential employers), only partly explain the substandard health profile of Americans involved with the correctional system. Americans entering prison are already significantly sicker and poorer than other Americans (Wilper et al. 2009; Schnittker, Massoglia, & Uggen 2012).

In the nation with the highest incarceration rate in the world (753 prisoners for every 100,000 people; Schmitt, Warner, & Gupta 2010), approximately 2.2 million people are currently in America’s prisons and jails, and around 7 million Americans are under some form of correctional supervision (Glaze & Herberman 2012). This is not an outlying minority; it is a substantial part of the American population. Have prisons become the way that America deals with human suffering?

Embedded in these grim statistics one group stood out to us. An estimated 70 percent of women drawn into the correctional system have experienced physical or sexual violence at some point in their lives (Chesney-Lind & Pasko 2004; McDaniels-Wilson & Belknap 2008; Bloom, Owen, & Covington 2004). Women prisoners have higher rates of HIV infection and other sexually transmitted diseases than male inmates, have higher rates of drug-use disorder, and are in greater need of mental health services (Arriola, Braithwaite, & Newkirk, 2006; Binswanger, Krueger, & Steiner 2009). Three-quarters of criminalized women live with chronic physical or mental impairments, or both, and women prisoners are three times more likely than women in the general population to report poor physical and mental health (James & Glaze 2006; LaVene et al. 2003). And while far more men than women are incarcerated, throughout the last two decades of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, the rate of incarceration of women has increased more rapidly than the rate of incarceration of men (Heimer et al. 2012).

During the spring and summer of 2008, we set out to understand the lives of women who have experienced incarceration. Although we had seen the statistics showing that women who enter the correctional system are likely to have suffered rape, poverty, and serious illnesses, nothing had prepared us for the relentless afflictions plaguing the residents we were getting to know at a Boston halfway house for women on parole and at a nearby drop-in center for poor and homeless women.

Forty-seven of the women we met that spring and summer agreed to join us in a project that would follow their experiences for five years. Their average age in 2008 was thirty-six. The majority of the women were white (reflecting the demographics of Massachusetts). Most began their lives in working-class families. Many had been sexually abused as children. Nearly all had witnessed their mothers being beaten or verbally abused by husbands or boyfriends. Often they attributed their adult drug or alcohol use to these childhood experiences of violence. A few remembered pleasant childhoods with strong and positive family relations, but had found their lives spiraling downward as adults when their parents died and they could not afford to keep up with the rent or mortgage payments. Several women had become addicts through prescribed pain or anxiety medication in the wake of an illness, injury, or unsuccessful medical procedure. In their twenties most scraped by in the unstable occupational sectors of the working poor, such as food service and nursing homes. They raised their young children with sporadic financial contributions from male partners and with public assistance. Poor health eventually made it impossible for nearly all of these women to hold down jobs, leading to homelessness and vulnerability to exploitation and violence.

All of the women had been incarcerated, typically for a few months at a time and typically for prostitution, shoplifting, public drunkenness, possession of small amounts of drugs, involvement as accessories to a crime committed by a boyfriend or husband, or—most frequently—violation of the terms of probation or parole associated with a prior minor charge (in other words, the original charge had not been deemed sufficiently serious to require incarceration). For many of the women incarceration had led to loss of custody or contact with their children. Coming out of prison with their children gone, no money, and no home, they became ever more dependent upon public services, men, and the underground economy.

We were privileged to spend time with the Boston women in a variety of settings. Throughout the five years of the study, we tried to meet with each woman at least once a month for an informal chat, and at three-month intervals for a longer, more structured conversation regarding housing, money, jobs, family, relationships, and health since the previous conversation. As the women came to know us, we accompanied them to numerous court hearings, medical appointments, parties, shopping trips, christenings, weddings, birthdays, hospital stays, and program graduations. We also saw the women when we spent time at the various parks and drop-in centers they frequented. Of the forty-seven women who initially joined the project, thirty-two have remained in touch with us. Because most of the women did not have a permanent address or regular telephone service, keeping in contact was an enormous challenge that on many occasions we failed to overcome. Suffolk University’s location afforded us a major advantage, as the campus is situated a block or so from the Boston Common, a large park where many homeless, unemployed, and marginalized Bostonians spend their days. Many of the women still like stopping by our office for a chat, a cup of coffee, or simply a quiet place to sit.

Throughout the study, we focused on the perceptions and viewpoints of the project women. We politely listened to opinions expressed by family members and by the many professionals with whom the women interact, but our commitment throughout has been to understand, to the best of our ability, how criminalized and marginalized women move through and interpret the world around them. Their stories emerged bit by bit over time. Often we didn’t hear what we suspect is a core story until several years into the project, and even today we hear different versions of the same story and we witness unexpected interactions with friends, family, caseworkers, and correctional staff.

We took on this project with the expansive goal of understanding why so many Americans remain in circumstances that cause them to suffer. Our aim was not to test any particular hypothesis or probe a particular issue, but to gain a holistic appreciation of the experiences of this community of women over an extended period of time. The five-year span of the project allowed us to grow with the project women. We have developed significant relationships with at least some of them and have been with these women as their lives have changed and changed again. For several, their relationship with us became one of the longest-lasting and most stable ever experienced. For others, the incentive we provided (typically a monthly mass-transit pass) was the sole motivation for participating in the project. Several women said that they stuck with us because they were determined to finish one thing in their lives. A few made a point of telling us about problems that they wished us to pass along to the mayor, the courts, the governor, or the president, and we take that mandate seriously.

Every step of the way we have felt honored that people who have so much going on in their lives have been willing to take time to stay in touch with us and, often, to open their hearts and families to us. As social scientists we entered this project with the rather narrow goal of observing and recording what we observed; we believed in the accepted research methods of our disciplines—sociology and anthropology—and we felt a professional obligation to minimize our own impact on the community we had chosen to study (the ethnographic field). Over the years, we have come to see that this stance constitutes passive acceptance of a status quo that actively harms the women who have trusted us with their lives and their stories. This book, as well as our ongoing advocacy work, represents our commitment both to scholarship and to activism.

More about the project and the project participants can be found in the appendix at the end of the book.

NO HAPPY ENDINGS

When we first visited the halfway house and the drop-in center where we initially met the women, we were struck by how dissimilar the two facilities seemed. At the halfway house the women were nicely dressed and groomed, bustling around doing chores, attending meetings, and planning for a sober future in which they would live normative American middle-class lives. At the drop-in center most of the women carried their belongings in bags and backpacks; they looked homeless, many appeared to be high or otherwise intoxicated, and no one seemed to be working in a serious ways toward goals such as education or finding employment. Impressed by these differences, our initial plan was to carry out a comparative study of the two groups of women in order to understand why some pull their lives together while others remain stuck in homelessness, addiction, and misery. The problem with that plan, we soon found out, is that virtually all of the women we had met at one facility had been in the other facility at some point in the past—and often more than one point—and many of them moved on to the other facility over the course of the study’s five years.

The five-year time frame allowed us unique opportunities to accompany women through cycles of ups and downs. We saw the same women sober and high, homeless and housed, employed and unemployed, in a supportive relationship and abused by a boyfriend, enthusiastically attending church and stigmatized by church members, involved on a daily basis with their children and out of those children’s lives, sick and healthy, happy and despondent. Sometimes they told us how well things were going: perhaps they finally got housing or a kind boyfriend; stayed sober; had charges dropped; obtained health care, needed surgery, or better medication; qualified for food stamps; visited their children; landed a part-time job or a wonderful new caseworker; or reconciled with estranged family members. We have learned over the years that how well things are going one month or one year is unlikely to predict how things will go down the line. An individual sometimes looks and sounds like a poster child for the working poor, the category used during the Clinton administration; that is, a worthy, hardworking, productive soul who with a bit of help will climb the rungs of America’s economic ladder. But a year earlier or a year later, the same woman may look and sound and act strung out, down and out, shit out of luck—the unworthy, unproductive welfare queen or crack whore who cares more about dope than about getting a job or caring for her children. That these transitions are so commonplace suggests to us that the line between scraping by and not scraping by has become exceedingly porous in contemporary America.

Even when things seem to be going well, there are no happy endings in this community. After waiting years for a subsidized apartment, the housing Tonya moved into was infested with bedbugs. Joy, held up as a model of success when she graduated from the halfway house program, was back on the streets after her landlord took her rent check and then shut off the water and electricity on the same day that she was hit with food poisoning. Anasia landed a job as a home health aide—for a client who repeatedly called her by a racial slur. When Christine was laid off from her job after three years, she learned that her employer had not been paying into unemployment insurance. Daisy’s purse was stolen the day she cashed her Social Security check. Vanessa’s seemingly extraordinarily kind and solicitous boyfriend turned into a violent stalker who locked her in a room. Because Gloria’s mail was stolen, she failed to receive and fill out a form to recertify her health care coverage. Francesca almost lost a foot to infection after an ostensibly minor surgery. Robin’s daughter was raped while in foster care. The clinic assigned Elizabeth a new psychiatrist, who insisted on changing her medication—and the new medication made her so loopy that she fell asleep in the park and was sexually assaulted. And when Isabella called the police to protect her from a man who was trying to kick in her door, her identification check showed an outstanding warrant for failure to pay court fees and she was locked up.

We have come to understand that while many portals lead into lives of affliction, few lead out. The largest risk factor for sexual abuse is having been sexually abused in the past; the largest risk factor for poverty is already having been poor; the largest risk factor for incarceration is previous incarceration. Poverty and prison mark an individual both physically and legally. All the women we met have been turned away from housing because of their criminal records. Nearly all are toothless or nearly toothless in the wake of battering and malnutrition. Only four have been able to land steady jobs, and even these four earned less than a